The AAR meeting would have been an interesting one, but not worth a month’s salary.
Moreover, I do understand rates of return and the rails inability to achieve their cost of capital. Therefore, the absolute best method of purchase of a railroad, or it’s stock is to purchase below it’s value. Thus, when CN is giving up tracks (and LAND) in a very hot real estate market and not receiving ownership in something in return…I have to wonder.
So, lets see, their benefit is they will be able to move their trains quicker, yet in the meanwhile they will continue to consume themselves. That logic is flawed. As an owner of the company, it concerns me. Regarding partial ownership of the IHB, I am sure their Canadian neighbor didnt want ANY part of that deal.
Since I am an outsider, I have no idea what goes on in the industry, nor the operations in the city. I dont know how much it costs to operate either on a company’s own line or over the IHB or any other line. But, if the CN is giving up book value and is receiving a double turnout in return while in the meanwhile their competitor is receiving considerable improvements to their property (IHB) I would question whether or not the project doesnt need revisiting.
Of course, CN may be trading it’s real estate for lower payments into the $212 million cost. I dont know. Nor will I ever know. My options are to cash out and pay capital gains if I dont trust ownership.
Regarding the flyover that benefits NS only, is that a true statement, or a generality? The two flyovers I recall would benefit more than just NS.
This should be a great project for the system and particularly when the six class ones become four or less.
I see two problems with your argument that CREAT should solely be a contract between the City of Chicago and the federal government.
(1) The tax structure—and current structure of government itself—would make such a contract impossible. The federal government taxes Chicago citizens at a considerably higher rate than city and Illinois taxes. If Chicago were to undergo such a project by itself, Chicago’s taxes would not only have to be considerably raised, but—in effect—Chicago would be hit up twice. It would have to pay federal taxes that are designed to go to such projects and its own tax increases in order to pay for the project.
I realize this is something you would probably like to change as well. However, this structure of government and taxation has been established since the second Roosevelt administration. It would take several years to redirect tax revenues—in the mean time we have to make sure the trains keep running.
(2) CREAT does not just benefit the citizens of Chicago and railroads; it benefits the whole nation. Increasing efficiency in the Chicago hub area will allow railroads to offer more competitive rates and take trucks off the road all over the nation. If X trucks per year from New Jersey to Seattle are taken off the road doesn’t the entirety of t
Chicago proper has long required grade seperations for all railroads, so blocked crossings is not a benefit to the city. The same is not true of the suburbs, however they don’t have the political clout the city does and regional co-operation isn’t the greatest.
The state has recently trippled tolls for trucks on the tollways which will affect some rail to rail via road transfers.
I’m not familiar with all of the inner yards, but many have no room for expansion. Both Clyde and Proviso are pretty much a mess now. The BNSF tanscon yards along I-55(Corwith or Corinth??) are also a mess. I saw one double-stack parked over Harlem ave. waiting to get in for 3 days last weekend.
Regarding the J, maybe some of the planning people should take a drive along the Kane/Kendall county corridor(Elgin to Joliet). In addition to the new Inermodal facilities that far out, trucking companies are building massive terminals out there. There’s also a couple of massive delievery facilities for unloading auto-racks and storing cars for dealers. Things aren’t so built-up that adding capacity to the J would be that difficult. 10 years from now, I don’t know. Maybe they’re holding out for a better offer???
Since there’s far fewer railroads coming into the region, I’m surprised they haven’t rationalized interchange more than they have???
The Chicago, IDOT, Metra, and Class I planning people are aware of what’s going on. Have been for decades. If you browse through all the reports you can find in Google (there are hundreds upon hundreds of reports, meeting notes, data sets, etc.), look at the dates these documents were issued. I have reports on my desk on Chicago dating to 1917 (!!!) that have been ignored by the elected representatives of the voters ever since. The planners are not vested with dictatorial powers. The voters often don’t want to listen, or don’t want to pay, or prefer to wait for miracles to happen. The politicians can’t act on their own, independent of the voters wishes – and I’m thankful they don’t, that’s called totalitarianism.
Most of the planning and railroad types realize that a massive build-up of freight traffic on the J probably isn’t going to happen now. The voters who live next to it would consider that a dimunition of their property values, and something that a reasonable person wouldn’t have predicted when they bought the property, and the law is on their side. It’s a lost cause.
If Chicago had three or four billion dollars in spare cash, it could pull all the yards out of the city and put them on the J, build up the J, and buy all the houses next to it for a few blocks on either side. Is that a reasonable use of that much money, out of anyone’s pocket? Probably not. Most solutions in the real world are far from “ideal,” but they are usually practical.
The suburbs intentionally did not institute grade-separation ordinances back when they had the chance. They wanted the railroad in order to enhance their property values and to create economic activity, and since they couldn’t agree to coordinate with each other, none was about to independently pass an ordinance, because that would have encouraged railroads to go around it. What they could have done was agree to be incorporated into Chicago, but they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too – piggyback on Chicago’s ec
I’m not familiar with the entire length of the J, but between Elgin and Joliet there aren’t a lot of houses next to it. The trucking terminals and light industry is much more predominant. There’s also a big political issue out there right now regarding the construction of a high voltage transmission line Com-Ed wants to build, I believe along the ROW.
I realize changes won’t happen overnight and the planning people just advise. I also don’t think it has to be an all or nothing solution where the inner yards would be eliminated. Clyde has become so overloaded with Intermodal, the Q is doing a lot more flat switching of general freight at Eola(out near the J) so it’s already happening. Most of the local freight work along the racetrack now originates from Eola, rather than Clyde.
I’m not involved in the kind of stuff you are, so I don’t know what the real plans are. I just think the ultimate resolution will be moving a lot of the traffic to the fringe areas, so it doesn’t have to enter the city proper in the first place. This is what’s happening in a lot of cities, not only with rail traffic, but truck as well. Logistics in Joliet is a good example of that. It may seem crazy to think it could happen on a large scale for now, but they said the same thing about the Alameda Corridor project out here in the Port of Los Angeles. It’s simply unbelievable how much money has been spent to make the expansions that were needed, but they did do it. Also, if you look at how much RR traffic actually interchanged inside the city limits of L.A. even just 30 years ago, as compared to now… It’s a tiny fraction. So I think it’s possible.
This is just pie in the sky, but I personally think the EJ&E should have built their own new classification yard on the West end, and also something like Logistics. Other small roads have benefited from the gamble of having a ‘build it and they will come’ attitud
All of the $$$ in the world may not help move the trains if the terminals cannot handle inbound moves.
Intermodal yards in the city are very small and cramped. I know there is a move out to Joliet and Rochelle for the new yards, but if an inbound train cannot be yarded, it sits. That in turn takes away a section of a mainline or a siding.
No, it won’t benifit the whole nation. It would benifit some people in the nation and harm other people in the nation. If you’re a waitress at a truck stop in North Dakota, and the number of trucks using I-94 goes down, you’re not going to benifit. You’re going to see your income degraded. There is absolutely no way for the Federal Govt. to sort this out so they should stay out of it and let that waitress earn her living.
The people who will benifit will be the shippers and rail carriers. These benifits are “divisible” in that they can be paid for by the entities that actually receive the benifits. Benifits for some things, such as national defense, are “indivisible” in that niether one of us can buy the amount of national defense we want. It has to be done collectively.
That’s not the case with rail freight. A shipper making the decision to use rail freight can decide just how much he wants to buy at just what price. He gets the benifits and he pays the costs.
You may regard shifting freight from truck to rail as a “good thing” ,but there are a whole lot of good folks who would be hurt by such a shift. You’re seeking to impose your values in an arbitrary manner that will harm many people.
Sorry, but I see your argument as a bit mendacious.
(1) I can’t think of a more subsidized—federal—entity than the interstate highway system and trucking. Yes, truckers pay taxes on it—but are you really asserting that those taxes represent the entirety of the expense that provides truckers the benefit of the Interstate highway system?
I see your argument as—in effect—saying that the waitress has the right not to have her federal subsidy interfered with by other federal subsidies.
(2) If the government were to spend three times the amount of money on CREAT, it is not going to leave the interstate highway system—or waitresses at truck stops—wanting for truckers. The issue here is not directing a large portion of the trucks on the road to rail, it is trying to stunt the growth of trucks before they drown themselves in their own success and the highways simply are not able to absorb them all.
(3) I disagree with your premise that highly expensive modes of transportation can be paid for by the individuals who use them. Would the Interstate highway system have been able to have been built were it not for federal investment? Heck, I don’t think the rail system in this country would have developed the way it did without land grants.
Many believe our government has a duty to develop a transportation network and infrastructure that allows our economy to thrive—the difference between a third and first-world country. This belief may be the fundamental premise that is the aegis our disagreement—as I too believe there is certainly a point where the government oversteps its boundary of encouraging an infrastructure in which business can thrive.
But, would we really be better off as a country had our industry not had federal encouragement of such an infrastructure? I, for one, believe we would be speaking German and would not have the luxury of having this pleasant debate.
No, no one has a “right” to a subsidy. The example was given as a response to your ascertation that CREAT would have “national” benifits. It won’t. It will help some folks and hurt others. I gave an example of one who would be hurt. The government can’t possibly sort out the help/hurt ratio - and it shouldn’t decide to help some of its citizens by hurting some others. (Happens all the time to no good result.)
Yes, the truckers get a tremendous cross subsidy from the autos using the Interstate System. The diversion of freight from rail to truck caused by the Interstate System was not forseen when the roads were built. A lot of people - railroaders - were unintentionally hurt by the construction of the Interstates. Again, government economic allocation actions have unintended and unmeasureable results. Which is why they’re generally a very bad idea.
I don’t see that an effective answer to the economic distortions of one subsidy is another distorting subsidy.
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(2) If the government were to spend three times the amount of money on CREAT, it is not going to leave the interstate highway system—or waitresses at truck stops—wanting for truckers. The issue here is not directing a large portion of the t
greyhounds-Are you suggesting that the 25 nations in the European Union are on there way to third world status? Since the GDP of the EU is equal to the United States, I think they have a long way to go.
Anyway, I am sort of curious as to how socialism causes third world status.
Because it stunts economic growth. It generally fails to allocate economic resources to where they can do the most good.
Europe is in decline. Look at the unemployment rate for the two major players, France and Germany. It’s double figures. Yes, 25 nations may equal one US. So what? It’s the future that counts and the future isn’t in Europe.
The growth is in free market Asia - particularly in the newly converted economy of China.
For years, Indian businessmen did very well everywhere throughout the world except in India. The socialist legacy left behind by Britain stunted growth. Now India is growing rapidly to the benifit of it population. This is the result of the adoption of free market reforms that freed their people to thrive.
I would suggest that there might be a few 100 million people of China and India that would strongly dispute your contention that all are thriving. Personally, I would prefer to hang about here or one of the other “declining” nations. Going from poverty to near poverty isn’t my idea of a goodtime.
By the way, are you suggesting to me that neither country has massive public works projects nor extensive government ownership of infrastructure and basic industries? That would be big news.
OK, strike “thriving” and substitute “rapidly improving”. In any event they’re doing a lot better than they were under socialism.
They’re privatizing basic industries and, according to Don Phillips, the Chinese government wants out of the railroad business. I’ve dealt with the government owned/operated Indian railways. They had a congealment that makes anything the UP has experienced look fluid.
Some infrastructure, such as highways, has to be public access if not necessarily public ownership. But that doesn’t mean government allocation of economic resources is efficient. That’s why countries that have “rapidly improving” economies are getting away from it and countries lagging behind are staying with it.
(1) Mendacious does not refer to the well-reasoned nature of your argument. It refers to my belief that you didn’t really expect me to believe that heavily subsidized truckers have a rational basis for complaining about the subsidation of railroads.
(2) China is thriving because of United States government regulation.
In the 70s, the United States created an environment that promoted low-to-mid skilled, intensive labor industry to move to China. The reason for doing this was to solidify the Sino-Soviet split and to combat stagflation (given these two goals, the project was successful). China has been successful in nursing off the United States’ dole because it has an educated proletariat—not because of its “free market economy.”
(3) I fail to see how trying to take the hose out of our transportation system’s mouth is not a public benefit. The government has decided that it is cheaper to subsidize railroads to slow the increase of highway use than provide for the more expensive—and less environmentally friendly—“SUBSIDY” of building new highways.
(4) Your reference to “old” Europe is an unfair comparison. I/others are asserting that the government is the most efficient organization to promote an infrastructure for private enterprise to thrive in limited circumstances. France and Germany do SO much more than that. Also, Germany’s problems include absorbing Eastern Germany.
(5) The reason we should throw money at a “highly expensive transportation” system is because (1) I can’t think of too many transportation systems that are not highly expensive (2) I am not so sure that, in the current economic environment, private industry would build toll roads—maybe short ones but not across the continental divide. Given the enormous amount of money and return on investment, why not invest in technology?
(6) No. Just because I believe that it makes sense for the government to involve itself with short-term, limited projects like CREAT
When it comes to bad weather they have already done this. A blizzard gave the city a big hit a few years ago and it took months to get back to normal. So RR’s created a council of sorts to develop a plan for next time and a the communcation to to complete it. Result? After the next blizzard it took them only three days to return the normal (if that is way they call it) traffic patterns.
I though they had to doubletrack no matter what to accomodate the STAR line that METRA will be running on the EJ&E - new station at Plainfield, commuter connection with the BNSF at Eola, etc.
I’m about 2 miles east of the J at 103rd and there are a lot more horns sounding the past couple of years.